I agree with you. I thought the same thing. If they had taken a safety the Seahawks would've been down 3. A team is much more desperate when down by more than 3 points and will attack the endzone on all 4 downs whereas they would be more content to try a field goal to extend the game.

That's true too. I was just considering the physics of punting. Usually, you can't get a good punt off if you're =<5 yards from your own end zone, so as a matter of field position, the Packers might have been better served doing a safety punt than punting from that deep in their own territory.

They cost GB the game three separate times. Just awful, looking forward to hearing what is said after the game. If I were the coach I'd have said screw you guys, but they're a classy bunch to come back out.

I don't think they had a choice. They would've been fined and possibly penalized in other ways for refusing to come out.

since the packers have no real owner to fine, I'd love to see them take a stand and refuse to play scab reff'd games anymore - the nfl has become a joke because they want to squeeze every last dime out of a group of employees who are a rounding error on the balance sheet

You don't think the officials just gifted the Seahawks a win with that

Gotcha.

This is a freaked up situation. The regular refs don't really rely on the NFL for their regular paycheck. For them this is a part time job. But it does pay them over 100K for seasonal work. But one of the things the refs are fighting for is to prevent the NFL from disciplining (by fining) and even firing refs for bad performances. They don't want to be held accountable for their bad performances and that's freaked up. There's a bit of irony to all this. The regular refs also don't want the NFL to add extra referee crews. What I don't get is why the NFL hasn't provided better training for these refs. These people should be in classrooms and on the field during the week learning how to referee NFL games correctly. They need to learn basics about the game like spotting the ball correctly, the correct yardage of penalties and clock management.

The NFL employs refs that were fired by the Lingerie Football League, due to incompetence.

If this is genuine, that's absolutely awful.

I haven't been watching any football this year (on account of the Nationals being great) but I have read and seen enough to know I'm not going to watch it until they put the damn regular refs back in. Imagine a playoff game under these conditions. I'm not going to support that. I have better things to do with my time then see teams getting consistently screwed over.

spider is right in that the refs are basically fighting for their right to be incompetent with no repercussions.

As for why the new refs aren't being schooled daily? They're only making something like 3K a game. Not nearly enough to be a full-time job.

they're fighting for their pension plan

Quote

The referees' union and NFL team owners remain at odds on several issues -- pay, staffing levels and the arbitration system, to name a few. But Scott Green, the referee who's head of the NFL Referees Association, says there's one proposal above all others that he and his colleagues can't manage to swallow: the league wants to freeze their long-running pension plans and switch them to less attractive 401(k)-style retirement plans.

Consider the amount of money that changed hands last night due to the bad call by the refs. The Packers were favored by 3. A lot of people will take the home underdog playing on Monday night. The Packers had that number covered up until that last play. In the end the Packers not only failed to cover but they also lost the game.